You Are the Table: The Overlooked Power of the Accompanying Spouse | Ep 98

Some of moving abroad photographs beautifully; the rest lives underneath, the grief, the pressure to make it worth it, the way one parent's stress becomes the emotional weather of the whole home. Mickelle welcomes back Dr. Katja Aegerter - psychologist, researcher, and self-described serial expatriate - whose work names what globally mobile families rarely say aloud.

Across nearly ten countries and two third culture kids of her own, Katja has spent years studying how transition stress moves through a family system and published the research to prove it. She and Mickelle explore the quiet architecture of a life across borders: why the accompanying spouse so often holds everyone steady, why belonging asks more of us than logistics, and how to move toward a place rather than away from an old one.

In this episode:

• How stress ripples through the whole family system, consciously or not

• The overlooked value of the accompanying spouse, and the cost of cutting support

• Moving toward something, not away from something

• How much you truly want to integrate and why it matters

• Knowing your own rhythm, introvert or extrovert, and honoring it

• Turning lived experience into research that makes families visible

For more about Katja and this episode, go to https://www.houseofperegrine.com/podcast/ep-098

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